Table of contents for 1388 in The Week

Controversy of the week The “shameful” plan to deport asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda has been grounded, for now, said The Independent. A last-minute judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stopped the plane that was due to fly to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, minutes before take-off on Tuesday night. The flight had been slated to take as many as 130 people. By Monday, legal challenges had whittled them down to seven. The decisive case was that of a 54-year-old Iraqi man, a victim of torture. The ECHR (which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights, and is not part of the EU) found that he should not be deported before a judicial review of the policy, due to be heard in July, is finished. As a…

One in 20 Americans under the age of 30 identify as non-binary or transgender. 44% of US adults say they know a transgender person, up from 37% five years ago. Pew Research Center/The Times More than half of the UK public believes that a key reason young people can’t afford to buy a home is that they spend too much on non-essentials such as takeaway food and coffee, subscription TV services such as Netflix, and holidays abroad. 48% of millennials also subscribe to this view, while only 33% disagree. KCL/The Times 28% of voters think Boris Johnson is a better PM than Keir Starmer would be; 26% think the Labour leader would be the better PM. Opinium/The Observer…

Bragg’s love of home Melvyn Bragg retains huge affection for Wigton, the town in Cumbria where he grew up, says Elizabeth Grice in The Daily Telegraph. His first home – a two-up, one-down with an outdoor loo – would be called a slum today; later, his parents ran a pub, and they lived above it. Yet Bragg never thought of the family as poor; and nor did he long to get away. In fact, when he won a scholarship to Oxford in the 1950s, he could scarcely bring himself to leave. Postwar Britain might have been grey – but to him, Wigton was full of life and colour. “I remember most how vivid it was, how undull, how full of things to do,” he says. “So much was going on…

The Swedish city of Malmö has installed “erotic” bins to tempt people to dispose of their rubbish. The dustbins play the voice of a woman in a state of great ardour, using phrases such as “mmm, yeah”, “just to the left”, and “that was crazy good” when people put rubbish in them. Marie Persson of Malmö’s road department explained that the bins are part of a drive to “get more people to talk about the dirtiest thing there is – littering”. A Michigan man has built a mini cinema for squirrels – complete with handmade promotional posters, a snack stand and a screen. Jason Lenzi, 30, spent two months and $600 creating the cinema, which will show a film he made – Revenge of the Squirrels – on a tablet…

CHINA How the censors got egg on their faces Taiwan News (Taipei) The 64 million followers of the cosmetics entrepreneur Li Jiaqi (Austin Li) were astounded: why had the online show of one of China’s biggest social media stars been cut off in mid-stream? Why was Li suddenly muted and his name removed from websites? Many assumed he’d been targeted by the tax authorities, says Keoni Everington. But a persistent few broke through Chinese firewalls to learn the truth: he’d caught the eye of censors because he’d been posing with a cake in the shape of a tank. It wasn’t meant as a protest: military hardware is a popular design motif in China and Li would hardly want to risk his commercial empire with an act of rebellion. But 4…

In theory, Britain has no blasphemy laws, said Jawad Iqbal in The Times. The right to challenge religious beliefs is meant to be a fundamental one in this country. Do we have the courage of our conviction, though? It’s hard to believe it when cinemas across the country are “busy cancelling screenings of a film about Islam at the behest of an angry mob”. Muslim protesters are furious about The Lady of Heaven, a film that features Fatima, one of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughters (and even a representation of Muhammad himself, albeit in CGI form). Hundreds picketed Cineworld cinemas in Bradford, Sheffield, Bolton and Birmingham that were showing the film. The chain quickly cancelled screenings across the whole of the UK, “to ensure the safety of our staff and customers”.…

“Are we reaching the fag-end of smoking culture?” asked Will Gore on The Independent. The Government hopes so. It wants to make England “smoke-free” by 2030 (defined as reducing tobacco use to less than 5% of the population; the level is now 14%). An independent review published last week offered some ideas for how this target might be reached. Among its proposals was that the legal age of sale for tobacco, currently 18, should rise by one year every year, so that eventually nobody can buy it. A similar plan has already been introduced in New Zealand: there, it will always be illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born after 2008. The Government “should get on and implement” this, said The Times. Smoking is a powerful and harmful addiction. If…

In just five months’ time, England’s footballers travel to Qatar to compete in the first ever winter World Cup, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. And on current evidence, there’s scant reason for optimism. Last summer’s finalists at the Euros seem to have regressed “into grim lethargy” across their four recent Nations League clashes. After a wretched 1-0 loss to Hungary, Gareth Southgate’s men earned uninspiring draws against Germany and Italy, before slumping to yet another demoralising defeat to Hungary on Tuesday, this time to the tune of 4-0 – the worst home loss in 94 years. Yes, the squad must be exhausted after ten months’ “unbroken toil”; even so, their “lack of sharpness was painful to behold”. True, some successful World Cup campaigns have had similarly inauspicious starts,…

by Geoff Dyer Canongate 302pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 This isn’t a book about Roger Federer (right), said John Self in The Times: the travails of the ageing tennis maestro make up “just a sliver” of its contents. Instead, it’s a book that “uses tennis as a springboard” for a wide-ranging discussion of “late work and last things”. Geoff Dyer has always revelled in digression, and he touches on a great many things: Bob Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour”; Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin; the film Brief Encounter; the Doors song The End. His own experiences also loom large: Dyer catalogues his myriad aches and pains (many brought on by playing tennis), and reflects that with late middle age, he has been confined to the “fringes of the sexual marketplace”.…

In his heyday, Glyn Philpot enjoyed considerable success, said Alan Hollinghurst in The Daily Telegraph. Philpot (1884-1937) made his name as a society portraitist, depicting “the rich, the gifted and the famous” with something of John Singer Sargent’s “combination of daring ease and old-masterly resonance”. Then, around 1930, “at the height of his public success, he left England for Paris, had a brief revelatory immersion in Weimar Berlin, and dramatically altered his style” for something far more spare and modernist. In the decades following his early death, “he lapsed into obscurity along with his subjects”. Only a few of his works, such as his dashing wartime portrait of Siegfried Sassoon, are widely known today. Now this “comprehensive” exhibition in Chichester seeks to re-evaluate this career, bringing together more than 80…

● Invest in an air purifier with a Hepa filter to trap floating pollen. Check it has a fan and the capacity to process all the air in your room at least three times an hour. ● A humidifier will reduce pollen’s ability to float and can help soothe inflamed nasal passages. Ensure humidity doesn’t get above 50%, though, as dust mites will thrive and worsen allergies. Alternatively, spray rooms occasionally with a fine water mist. ● Keep doors and windows shut as much as possible during the day and consider fitting pollen screens to allow ventilation. ● Ensure your vacuum has a Hepa filter and use it at least once a week. Empty the vacuum bag outside, wearing a mask. Use a damp cloth for dusting, not a dry…

Paula Rego 1935-2022 “And how is your painting coming along?” people would ask Paula Rego patronisingly over the canapés at private views of her husband’s work. Little did they imagine, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times, that this slight Portuguese woman, with “dark, flashing eyes” and a teasing smile, would come to be feted as one of our greatest contemporary artists. Revealing “the human comedy from a relatively uncharted female point of view”, Rego created unsettling, visceral images that explore everything from domestic control to fascist regimes and sex trafficking, said The Daily Telegraph. Her paintings and drawings often play on questions of power, politics and sexuality. And yet they “resist neat, comfortable interpretation”, said Hettie Judah on Art UK. “They broadcast an inner world that is emotionally messy and…

US stock and bond markets entered into panic mode in the run-up to a crucial US Federal Reserve meeting to set interest rates, after reports indicated a growing risk that inflation is becoming more deeply embedded. The benchmark S&P 500 index suffered five consecutive days of sell-offs, diving into bear territory on fears that US rates would have to rise at a much steeper rate than anticipated. Yields on some Treasury bonds hit their highest levels since 2007, while spreads on US corporate bonds indicated a higher chance of default. The FTSE 100 was protected from the worst of the carnage by its high proportion of defensive stocks. But the pound fell below $1.20 as traders pondered the Bank of England and the Fed’s different rate-hiking cycles. The Bank, which…

Evisceration Having seen their fortunes soar during the pandemic, the 500 wealthiest people in the world have lost a combined $1.4trn in 2022 “as global financial markets buckle under the weight of higher interest rates and inflation,” said Yoojung Lee on Bloomberg. It’s in stark contrast to last year, when soaring markets boosted the population of high-net-worth individuals (those with $1m in liquid assets) by about 8%. Biggest losers Five of the world’s richest people have lost more than $345bn combined. Taking the crown for the biggest loser is Changpeng Zhao, founder of crypto exchange Binance, who has taken an $85.6bn hit and is now worth $10.2bn. Next is Tesla’s Elon Musk (down $73.2bn to $197bn); Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (down $65.3bn to $127bn); Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (down $64.4bn to $61bn);…

What happened In the wake of last week’s confidence vote, Boris Johnson sought to reset his premiership with a speech in Blackpool outlining the Government’s policy agenda. He promised to use “fiscal firepower” to ease the cost-ofliving crisis; to tackle long-standing problems such as unaffordable childcare; and to build a high-growth, low-tax economy where everyone could buy their own home. The PM’s speech was overshadowed by gloomy economic news. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted last week that Britain would be the worst-performing G20 economy after Russia next year, with zero growth, owing to high inflation, interest-rate hikes and rising taxes. Data released this week showed that the UK’s GDP shrank by 0.3% in April, and that real pay is falling at the fastest rate in more than…

When you buy them on holiday to carry fruit home from the market, raffia bags cost about £2. Prada’s costs £1,400, yet for the second year running, the fashion set has gone so wild for it that some retailers have run out of stock. But there is good news for those who find the price a stretch: Zara is now selling an almost identical tote (just without Prada emblazoned across it) for about £1,377 less. Students of forensic science at the University of Exeter have been warned that they may be exposed to images and descriptions of “murder, sexual assault, self-harm, violence and death that some may find offensive and/or traumatising”. The university has also stressed, however, that “graphic” content is “integral” to the module in question.…

Paris The threat to Macron: France goes to the polls this weekend with a new left-wing coalition threatening to deny President Macron’s centrist alliance a majority in the country’s national assembly. In the first round of legislative elections on Sunday, the NUPES – made up of Socialists, Greens, Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s new France Unbowed party – took 26% of the vote, putting it more or less neck and neck with Macron’s Ensemble grouping. Mélenchon (pictured), who leads the new bloc, has campaigned on a platform that includes lowering the pension age from 62 to 60, and a freeze on energy prices. Seville, Spain Soaring temperatures: Spain was gripped by its earliest heatwave in 40 years this week. The mercury climbed above 40°C in Seville and other parts of the…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC 1 It’s Not Unusual by Les Reed and Gordon Mills, performed by Tom Jones2 Burn it Down by Kevin Rowland, performed by Dexys Midnight Runners3* Double Barrel by Winston Riley, performed by Dave & Ansell Collins4 Atmosphere by Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Ian Curtis, performed by Joy Division5 Funkin’ for Jamaica by Tom Browne and Toni Smith, performed by Tom Browne6 Hello Stranger, written and performed by Barbara Lewis7 Pieces of a Man by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, performed by Gil Scott-Heron8 A Change is Gonna Come, written and performed by Sam Cooke Book: History by Elsa Morante Luxury: A painting set with edible paints * Choice if allowed only one record…

In October 1859, as a ferocious storm raged in the Irish Sea, the steam clipper Royal Charter was dashed onto the rocks off Anglesey, killing more than 450 people. A total of 133 ships were sunk in the storm, at a cost of 800 lives. Robert FitzRoy, the former captain of Darwin’s HMS Beagle, who had been appointed Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade, wrote to The Times and explained that the storm had been predictable – and the sinkings avoidable. Barometer readings and other data could be collected and shared using the new technology of telegraphy. Spurred into action, FitzRoy set up a network of 15 coastal stations to collect data for “weather forecasts”, a term he had coined in 1863. His first forecast was published in The…

How Hawaii was trashed by outsiders Keoni DeFranco The Washington Post Feral chickens are causing trouble in Hawaii, says Keoni DeFranco. They’ve proliferated so much over the years (a rise blamed partly on tourists feeding them, and partly on hurricanes blowing open coops and allowing many birds to escape) that they’ve become a road hazard. “It’s true our islands are overrun – but not just by chickens.” And we kãnaka maoli, or Native Hawaiians, face far more damaging interlopers: the military, mass tourism and non-local property buyers. Together, these have degraded Hawaii’s environment, destroyed the islands’ self-sufficiency and fuelled inequality. Today, Native Hawaiians make up only 20% of the islands’ population, yet we represent half of the homeless. US military bases occupy 20% of the land. Over the years, leaks…

A University of Manchester team has developed a biodegradable gel that could be used to repair the tissue damage caused by heart attacks. Every year, more than 100,000 people in the UK are admitted to hospital after suffering a heart attack, and owing to medical advances, more of them survive than ever. But as hearts have very limited ability to regenerate after an attack, these patients remain at risk of further health problems. Researchers have tried injecting stem cells into the heart, to heal the damage, but the cells have not survived. Now, the Manchester team hopes its gel will solve that problem. When injected into the heart, it creates a scaffold on which these new cells can grow, holding them in place until they can graft onto pre-existing tissue.…

Last week the Government threw out a series of “red meat” policies designed to shore up Boris Johnson’s position, said Bob Kerslake in The Guardian. One of them ought to cause “real concern”. The “Benefits to Bricks” scheme would allow housing association tenants to buy their properties, for up to 70% less than their market value, and to pay their mortgages using housing benefits. This rehashing of Margaret Thatcher’s flagship right-to-buy policy for council homes is still at the drawing-board stage. “It should stay there.” The most obvious problem is that housing association properties aren’t actually the Government’s to sell: they belong to the associations, which are mainly charities. Were the associations to be forced to sell their properties, they’d need to be compensated for any discounts, so that the…

“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”John Galsworthy, quoted on The Browser “Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have trying to change others.”Arnold Glasgow, quoted in Forbes “What is woke culture if not the howl of a generation of underemployed humanities graduates?”Janan Ganesh, quoted in The Times “Let’s admit it, we can’t truly be leaders if we’re only living for re-election.”Matthew McConaughey, speaking at a White House press briefing “Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”Samuel Butler, quoted in Forbes “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”Lily Tomlin, quoted in Parade “Don’t read your reviews; weigh them.”Andy Warhol, quoted in The Times “Mystery is…

To The Times The Prince of Wales should be applauded for his criticism of a policy unashamedly put forward to punish asylum seekers who risk their lives coming to our shores. Amnesty International and the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour have criticised Rwanda’s record on human rights. The royal family are charged with a responsibility to defend Christian values, which teach kindness to strangers and those in distress. The Government’s policy is an inversion of such teachings, which are common to all faiths. Lord Singh of Wimbledon, House of Lords To The Times However much we may agree with Prince Charles’s view on Rwanda, the monarchy must remain apolitical. Charles has no particularly noteworthy academic achievements and is not an expert on any subject. He hasn’t earned…

by Benjamin Markovits Faber 361pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 Benjamin Markovits’s latest novel is a “compelling account of relative failure”, said Joseph Owen in Literary Review. Brian, the narrator, is a “big fat slow” Jewish kid from Austin, Texas, who becomes childhood friends with Marcus Hayes, his high school’s basketball star. Marcus is black, and from a broken home – for a while he lives with Brian’s family – but in adulthood, when Marcus becomes an “NBA superstar”, Brian is merely a “semi-successful” sportswriter. The novel convincingly portrays Brian’s “inhibited world-view”, which is “tainted by jealousy” of his friend. The result is a “bleak, amusing, ultimately absorbing read”. This is a novel with the “topography of a classic American story”, said Stuart Evers in The Spectator: “sport as a…

In 1844, the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was offered a commission to paint Inès Moitessier, “the new young wife of a high-society banker”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Initially, he showed no interest – but when they met, her “Junoesque appearance” persuaded him to accept. The resulting portrait was an “astonishing” work that elevates its subject from “living woman to Roman sculpture”. Nearly a century later, Pablo Picasso used the image as the basis for his similarly epochal Woman with Book (1932), a “post-cubist” likeness of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter in “exactly the same pose”. Now, for the first time, this “great” (and free) exhibition at the National Gallery brings the two paintings together, highlighting the “parallels” between the two as well as the discrepancies. Ingres paints Madame Moitessier…

At the community picnic, Jim wins the Unsung Hero vote. In a moving speech he dedicates the award to friends, and Jazzer gets choked up. As Jim helps Jazzer pack, Jazzer tells him he’s been like a father to him, and they bid an emotional farewell. Kate ministers to convalescing Brian, to his irritation. When Stella finds him in the office, she tells him her own father died of a heart attack; Brian softens and says he’ll take time out. After some good news, Vince treats Beth and Ben to a celebration dinner, but is interrupted by a call from a hysterical Steph: Liam had an affair and she has walked out. Sympathetic Vince says she can stay with him. Beth is suspicious of her sister’s story and later discovers…

Serves 4 2 tbsp olive oil 1 banana shallot, finely chopped 300g beef mince 300g pork mince 2 large garlic cloves, grated 1 tsp Spanish paprika 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika 1 tsp ground cumin handful of chopped coriander, plus extra to garnish 250g baby spinach 30g sultanas 30g pine nuts, toasted sea salt and freshly ground black pepper crusty bread, to serve For the spiced saffron yoghurt: 300g Greek yoghurt 1 garlic clove, grated 1 tbsp finely chopped mint leaves pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1 tsp boiling water 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil • Preheat the oven to 180°C. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a small frying pan over a low heat and gently fry the shallot for 10 minutes until soft. Set aside and allow…

The 39-acre garden at Buckingham Palace has a lake fringed with giant planes and specimen trees, a 156-metre-long herbaceous border, a magnolia dell, a formal rose garden and around 250 wild-flower varieties (tours 25 July-2 October, rct.uk). At Balmoral, in Aberdeenshire, there is a formal garden created by Queen Mary in the 1920s. There is also a walled garden, a water garden, a rose garden and walks through rhododendrons and azaleas (open daily until 2 August, balmoralcastle.com). The gardens at Sandringham, in Norfolk, have a more relaxed feel, with two lakes fringed by flowering shrubs and woodland walks with magnolias and camellias (open until 13 October, sandringhamestate.co.uk). Highlights of the garden at Prince Charles’s residence Highgrove, in Gloucestershire, include the topiarised Thyme Walk and Chelsea award-winning Carpet Garden, and the…

Touring Lake Constance Even on a sunny day, there’s something “powerful and elemental” about Lake Constance, the 40-mile-long, eight-mile-wide bulge in the Rhine that lies at the meeting point of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Its waters have been “a crossroads” since before Roman times, said William Cook in The Daily Telegraph, and though popular with regional tourists, the pretty towns on its banks retain a reassuringly workaday air. The largest, Konstanz, is an hour by train from Zurich airport, and from there, visiting the others by ferry is great fun, making for the sort of holiday that might have sent a Victorian traveller into ecstasies. Among the highlights are Meersburg (“quaint”), Lindau (“absurdly picturesque”), peaceful Rorschach and on the Austrian shore, Bregenz, which has a Viennese-style grandeur that feels “dreamlike”…

British Airways/easyJet: a long hot summer Strikes in Britain seem to be almost as contagious as Covid. The latest to the barricades, said Charles Hymas and Louis Ashworth in The Daily Telegraph, are British Airways’ ground and cabin staff, who are threatening a summer of disruption due to a dispute over pay. Unite, which represents 16,000 BA workers, won a 97% vote for action; it is also balloting some 500 check-in staff. The prospect of further disruption after the jubilee chaos will exacerbate the blame game currently playing out between airlines and the Government. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who has laid into the industry for overbooking flights that they could not provide and failing to anticipate demand, has found an unlikely ally in Unite. The union claims that “thousands of…

The 1970s: were they as bad as all that? Roger Bootle The Daily Telegraph It has become standard practice to observe that Britain risks sliding into an economic cataclysm as dire as that of the 1970s, says Roger Bootle. But how bad were things during that decade? If you look at the aggregate data, it is “remarkably good”. The average rate of GDP growth, at 2.6%, was the same as that achieved over “the supposedly much better 1980s”. Real wages rose by 2%, and unemployment was only a little above where it is now. The mismatch with our collective memories is because it was “a roller-coaster decade”: it began and even ended quite well; “it was the period in the middle that was absolutely ghastly”. In 1975, inflation peaked at…

The week’s best shares Alphabet The Daily Telegraph Google’s owner has a “monopoly” in search and is the “global leader” in AI. A strong position allows it to pass on prices to customers, and it’s heading towards 20% margins in its cloud arm. Looks cheap. Buy. $2,300. B&M European Value Retail Investors’ Chronicle After a “stellar” pandemic performance, the discount retailer’s figures have plateaued. Profit growth has stalled and UK sales have fallen. But shares are cheap, it’s growing fast in France and is price competitive. Buy. 395p. Chemring Investors’ Chronicle The defence contractor is well placed to benefit from £104bn-worth of defence spending increases, pledged by seven European countries. Operating costs are rising, but debt is down and strong growth is expected. Buy. 339p. Serco Group The Times The…

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Prince Andrew, who was barred from taking part in the traditional Order of the Garter Day procession around Windsor. The Palace described it as a “family decision”. Earlier, it had been reported that Andrew has been lobbying the Queen to reinstate his HRH title, and allow him to return to public life, and that he had also been pushing for his daughters to be given royal duties. Wimbledon traditions, with news that Sue Barker has decided to hang up her microphone, after 30 years. The 66-year-old presenter and former tennis player said that she had been offered an extension to her contract, but had decided that this year’s tournament should be her last. Keir Starmer, who felt obliged to tell his shadow cabinet to stop briefing the press about how…

Palm Beach, Florida Trump’s rage: Donald Trump has lashed out furiously at the congressional committee investigating last year’s Capitol riots, calling it a “kangaroo court”. The committee opened proceedings last week with a bombshell video showing Trump’s daughter Ivanka and several trusted aides saying on camera that they knew the 2020 election had not been “stolen”, despite Trump’s insistence that it had been. Bill Barr, his former attorney general, told the committee that Trump had become “detached from reality” and showed “no interest in what the actual facts were”. Trump responded that his daughter “had long since checked out” and knew nothing of the election results and that Barr was “weak and frightened” and he “sucked”. In a 12-page statement, the former president, who still claims the election was rigged,…

“In recent decades, a strange new rule has emerged: become famous enough in one creative field and you’re practically handed success in another. No matter how awful you might be at the second. Jim Carrey makes astonishing amounts from his amateur paintings. Robbie Williams has had an exhibition at Sotheby’s. Reese Witherspoon and Serena Williams are making their children’s book debuts this year. Johnny Depp is performing rock concerts alongside Jeff Beck. Along with the basic unfairness of letting fame trump excellence, there is the certain risk of talent leaking out of the arts: meritocracies are more fragile than we think. Pull at a thread and they unravel.” Martha Gill in The Guardian…

A modest proposal to aid the monarchy Sean O’Grady The Independent As a “mild monarchist”, I’m keen to see the royal family survive, says Sean O’Grady. But if they’re to fend off rising “republican grumblings”, they’ll have to change. So here’s my reform plan: let’s “nationalise them”. At present, it’s hard to make out which bits of their vast wealth belong to the taxpayer (Windsor Castle?) and which are family jewels (Sandringham?); which duties they deign to do and which they’re obliged to do. It’s a recipe for resentment. A formal deal would eliminate such ambiguity. Working royals would receive a full-time salary in return for carrying out defined ceremonial duties. Like ministers, they’d get expenses and enjoy the help of state-funded staff. This would pay for liveried flunkies for…

The vegetation covering the Alps The Alps are turning green, owing to plant life thriving in a warmer, wetter climate, a study has found. Researchers from two universities in Switzerland examined satellite data from 1984 and 2021, and calculated that the vegetation above the tree line had increased in almost 80% of the terrain observed, while the amount of snow cover had decreased in 10% of the area. “The scale of the change has turned out to be absolutely massive in the Alps,” said Prof Sabine Rumpf of the University of Basel, author of the study, which was published in Science. “The Alps are becoming greener because plants are colonising new areas and the vegetation is generally becoming denser and taller.” These plants will absorb some CO2, she added, but…

Having only spent three months as foreign secretary before becoming PM, John Major felt a bit deficient in diplomatic know-how. He was thrown when, at his first meeting with Jacques Delors, the EC president kept referring to “Doogla”. What was Doogla? An EU agency? Finally, Major realised that Delors was referring to his foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd. Boris Johnson has been made an honorary Cossack and given the name Boris Chuprina, meaning “Boris Long-Lock-of-Hair”, by a Cossack community in Ukraine. “You can see that he has such a freedomloving haircut, which underlines his personality and his strong will,” said Andriy Lisovy, of the Chernihiv museum. In a further tribute, the PM was depicted as a Cossack folk hero in a painting by local artists. The crowds on the Mall seemed…

The industrial strife that brought Britain to its knees in the 1970s may be “a distant memory”, said The Times. But we’re about to learn that “militant trade unionism” can still wreak havoc: next week, 40,000 rail workers will strike for three days; and 10,000 London Underground workers will also walk out. The biggest rail strike since 1989, it will create misery for hundreds of thousands of people, ranging from teenagers sitting public exams to cricket fans trying to get to the Test at Headingley; and it may just be the start. Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), has threatened a “summer of discontent” in pursuit of his members’ demands. These include pay rises in line with inflation, and no…

It doesn’t get any better than this, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. On Tuesday, in front of a packed crowd at Trent Bridge, England clinched a series win against New Zealand with one of the most “glorious and scintillating” victories in their history. Star of the show was Jonny Bairstow, whose extraordinary 77-ball century – the second fastest in Tests by an England player – enabled his team to make light work of chasing 299 in 72 overs. Almost as vital was the contribution of Ben Stokes, who partnered Bairstow for most of his innings and whose thunderous boundary, at 5.24pm, brought victory with 22 overs to spare. Together with coach Brendon McCullum, England’s new captain has transformed his team in just two games from “side devoid of…

Football Liverpool have signed Uruguay striker Darwin Núñez from Benfica for a club record fee of up to £85.5m. Norway’s Erling Haaland has now completed his £51.5m move to Manchester City. Rugby union Saracens will face Leicester Tigers in the final of the Gallagher Premiership, after beating Harlequins 34-17 in the semifinal last Saturday. Golf Rory McIlroy retained his RBC Canadian Open title, hitting a final round of 62 to finish two shots clear of the American Tony Finau.…

by Lindsey Fitzharris Allen Lane 336pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 For many soldiers in the First World War, “the fear of being permanently disabled was more terrifying than death”, said Wendy Moore in The Guardian. And worst of all was the prospect of facial disfigurement. While those who lost a limb were “treated as heroes”, those with damaged faces were “often shunned or reviled”. The New Zealand-born surgeon Harold Gillies devoted his working life to these men, transforming the emerging art of plastic surgery and helping thousands to “literally face the world again”. At the Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup, Kent – the world’s first specialist maxillofacial unit – he developed pioneering reconstructive techniques, including complex “skin, cartilage and bone grafts”. Lindsey Fitzharris’s “engrossing” biography isn’t for the fainthearted: it…

Created by Layered Reality in collaboration with Historic Royal Palaces, The Gunpowder Plot is an “exhilarating” new immersive experience that takes place in the “vividly evocative” setting of the Tower of London Vaults, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. The year is 1605, and – aided by 20 actors, and stunning projections, lighting and sound – the audience is plunged into a “treacherous realm”, in which “Protestants and Catholics are teetering at the brink of savage religious war”. Will we side with Guy Fawkes’s radical cell of persecuted Catholics, plotting a terrorist atrocity in Westminster? Or will we betray these impassioned activists, in order to save untold lives? There are three “mesmerising VR moments”, but just as thrilling is being drawn by the actors into the role-play, as they scheme…

Into the Silence by Wade Davis, 2011 (Vintage £18.99). Writing narrative history is about staying true to the facts while drawing your reader into a story that’s as gripping as fiction. This book is about as good as it gets: the story of the Mallory-era mountaineers who, shaped by the horrors of the First World War, tried to scale Mount Everest. American Tabloid by James Ellroy, 1995 (Windmill Books £9.99). I’m on a break from history at the moment, writing a fiction trilogy set in the Hundred Years War (volume one, called Essex Dogs, is out in September). Ellroy’s nightmarish vision of JFK-era America and his machine-gun prose isn’t my model, but I groove on its rancid energy. She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor, 2010…

Programmes Tutankhamun: Secrets of the Tomb One hundred years after the discovery of the tomb, palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi investigates the “Pharaoh’s curse”. Sun 19 Jun, C4 20:00 (60mins). Glastonbury: 50 Years and Counting Made over three years, this documentary charts the social and musical history of the legendary festival, as told by founder Michael Eavis, his daughter Emily, and many of its past headliners. Sun 19 Jun, BBC2 21:00 (105mins). Suspect Eight-part psychological crime thriller running through the week – each part focusing on a different character. James Nesbitt, Anne-Marie Duff and Richard E. Grant star. Sun 19, Mon 20, Tue 21 and Wed 22 Jun, C4 21:00 and 21:30 (30mins each). The Whistleblowers: Inside the UN Documentary revealing the culture of silence faced by whistleblowers who allege abuse and…

Croatia group tour Explore cities, villages, national parks and the Dalmatian coast. 12 nights from £2,700pp half board with two breakfasts (UK flights included). 0117-453 4770, regent-holidays.co.uk. Arrive 11 September. Costa Rica adventure An action-packed group tour of the jungles, thermal springs and beaches of Costa Rica. 8 nights from £815pp self-catered (excluding flights). 020-7313 6936, gadventures.com. Arrive 13 August. Norfolk cottage The Aldborough, near the seaside town of Cromer, has an indoor pool and play park for children. 7 nights from £1,276 (sleeps 4), self-catered. 01263-715779, norfolkcottages.co.uk. Arrive 26 August. A week in Las Vegas Stay at the Bellagio, with its famous fountains, gallery and restaurants. 6 nights from £1,937pp self-catered (Heathrow flights included). 0344-472 9646, virginholidays.co.uk. Arrive 4 August. Covid-19: please check government websites for testing and quarantine…

Steve Rowe Last week, M&S marked the “final checkout” of its chief executive Steve Rowe – a “lifer” who started his career, aged 15, in the Croydon store. Of course, “it wasn’t just any leaving do”, said Sam Chambers in The Sunday Times. Guests at the party, held at Westminster Abbey’s cloisters, “were greeted by a line of shopping trolleys covered in flowers” and “a cardboard cut-out” of Rowe, 54, “in his beloved Millwall scarf”. The evening was topped off by the presentation of a giant Percy Pig inscribed: “From one legend to another”. Rowe’s father Joe, who ran M&S’s food business for years, was in the crowd, as were his four children. Chairman Archie Norman remarked that there had been a Rowe at M&S for 60 years: “So I…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1316 An Ettinger shoe horn and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 27 June. Send it to The Week Crossword 1316, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Lively, having enjoyed supper? (4,2,5) 9 Display reduction in special delivery (3-4) 10 “Attack” the French cry (4,3) 11 Plate brought back for a dog? (6) 14 Rubbishy stuff inside thus not moving (6) 15 Boring Edward has debts (7) 16 Finished…